Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden

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The story of how Beth Chatto created her gravel garden on ‘possibly the driest, and the most windswept, piece of soil in England’ has a message of hope for gardeners everywhere. At the outset she promised herself: ‘This garden was not to be irrigated in times of drought. Once established the plants must fend for themselves or die.’

The results, beautifully portrayed in Steven Wooster’s specially commissioned photographs taken through the seasons, testify to the triumphant outcome of the adventure.

Beth Chatto runs her own Garden and Nursery for Unusual Plants at Elmstead Market, near Colchester. She has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society Victoria Medal of Honour and the Lawrence Memorial Medal. In 1988 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Essex University.